


Rivers in the Dust/Invocations on a Phrase

by Lacquiparle



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: F/M, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:14:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28014525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacquiparle/pseuds/Lacquiparle
Summary: Takes place directly after S3 and can be read as a prequel to my story, A Story with too Many Words.Hardy and Miller investigate a heinous crime committed by a woman with multiple horrific secrets.  During this investigation, they realize why they didn't go to the pub.
Relationships: Alec Hardy & Ellie Miller, Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Comments: 12
Kudos: 86





	1. Spring/Ashes

**Author's Note:**

> “I love you as certain dark things are to be loved/in secret, between the shadow and the soul,” from “Love Sonnet XVII” by Pablo Neruda 
> 
> Each section has a relationship to the natural elements and how those natural elements affect the noir genre. I also link each song that can be listened to in tandem with each chapter. 
> 
> Many thanks to Ace for their proofreading skills. :)

Song for this chapter: [Ashes by Radical Face](https://youtu.be/IKe0bDeGyM0)

In April, Ellie had a dream. 

The wind whistled a current through her window, rattling the panes terribly. Spring in Broadchurch was usually mild, but given it was a coastal city, weather advisories were not abnormal.

That night, as the wind howled outside her window, she dreamt of Joe.

He stood at the foot of her bed, his toothy grin spread across his face. His hands in cuffs. Abruptly, she was pulled from her reverie and sat up in bed, pulling the duvet over her body. 

_Ellie_ , his ghost whispered, reaching for her. And then as quickly as he arrived, he was gone.

&

The day after Hardy and Miller had closed the Trish Winterman case, Miller found a solitary KitKat on her desk. She glanced toward Hardy’s office, his phone propped against his ear, his face flustered. She smiled in his direction, his attention directed elsewhere.

After they had parted ways at the pier, he had texted something about how grabbing a pint didn’t seem right. Power and insubordination and he’s her boss and he didn’t really drink anyway.

 _It’s fine, sir_. 

_I wouldn’t be much fun_.

She smiled to herself, the light of her phone glimmering across her face. Tom came wandering into the room, a questionable expression on his face.

“What’re you doing?” He asked, plotting himself on the sofa beside her.

“You know anything about Tinder?”

He looked absolutely horrified and proceeded to get up from the sofa. “Mum, er…”

“No, not for me, love.” 

A bewildered expression crossed Tom’s face, so Ellie showed her eldest son the string of text messages on her phone. He briefly glanced at them before handing the phone back to her. 

“What about Tinder?”

“Hardy went out on a date, but seems…”

“Awkward?” Tom offered with a smug look on his face. Ellie playfully chided him with an elbow to his side.

“You cheeky bugger, no.” She glanced through the text messages again, looking for some prophetic insight. “I just want to help him is all.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He got up from the couch.

“Why not?” She gazed away from her phone toward her son. He was young still but looked so like Joe at that age, his body long and lean, his hair the same color dirty brown. A thread of anxiety panged her stomach, but she shook it off. 

Tom shrugged, grabbing his duffle from the entryway as he trotted upstairs. “Dunno. Just doesn’t seem like a good idea.” 

&

In the morning, Hardy briefed everyone in the bullpen about a body uncovered in a nearby flat. Young bloke. Mid-twenties. Several clean lacerations into his midsection. He had been left in the bathroom tub, ice packed around his body when the neighbors called about a strange scent emanating from his flat. His lips were already the faint color purple. Forensics examined the body and uncovered missing kidneys. 

People dispersed for the day, but Hardy reached to touch Miller’s elbow, towing her with him. Miller shrugged him off but followed him despite his tactile gesture.

“What?” She inquired as he attempted to usher her into his office. Hardy shut the door before he turned to face her.

“It’s Jenkinson.”

“What about her?”

That familiar pained expression appeared across his face, the one she distinctly remembered from their early days working together. Dark shadows sketched underneath his eyes from sleepless nights. 

“Is she ill?” Miller offered, sitting in Hardy’s chair.

“No. She’s retiring, Miller.” 

An awkward silence dissipated between the two of them, Hardy removing his glasses and placing them on his desk. Miller uneasily glanced away from his alert scrutiny, suddenly on high alert.

“What does this have to do with me? Everyone knows you’re getting her position,” she finally said haughtily, sizing him up.

“Don’t be like that with me, Miller. We both know…”

“That you’re a shitface,” Miller offered just as Hardy mumbled that she deserved the job. “What? No. Don’t be daft. Everyone knows that Jenkinson is offering the position to you.” 

“She hasn’t said anything.” 

Miller instinctively crossed her arms over her chest, her nostrils flaring slightly as she bit the inside of her lip. It didn’t seem to matter that they were each other’s closest allies or the worst pairing for one another; at times, they seeped into one another’s skin like fiery acid, intent on erupting together. 

“Ellie.”

Hardy began to reach toward her, but Miller raised her eyebrows to him, so he stopped. 

“You should go up for it,” he said. “You deserve it.” 

Miller sighed finally, leaning back into Hardy’s chair with a burdened weight inside her body. “That’s not true and you know it. I’ve got the boys and I’m a single mum now. I can barely keep up as DS as it is. Imagine the stress?”

Hardy mumbled something in agreement. 

“It was different with Joe,” she muttered low under breath, running her fingers across the armrest of the chair. 

“You’d get paid more. Could get a childminder.” 

Her face scrunched slightly at him, indicating that was out of the question. “Tom’s and my relationship is finally mending and poor wee Fred. He doesn’t have a clue about…” her eyes fluttered up toward him and back down toward her hands, which were fidgeting with the chair. “Can’t always my dad to come around,” she added quietly more as an afterthought. 

Hesitantly, Hardy took a step toward her. 

“Come by my place tonight. Daiz is at her mum’s and we need to brief this new case. Plus, I know you’re a shit cook.”

“Am not!”

“Miller, I’ve had your cooking.” He rubbed his stomach, indicating distress. 

“Fine! I’ll ask my dad if he can watch Fred. Tom acts like he’s a grownup all of a sudden.”

“Let him. He probably feels like the man of the house.” Miller shot him a look, but decided it wasn’t worth a fight. “Six fine?” He asked. 

She nodded. 

&

After interrogating one of the neighbors, Hardy called Miller into his office and shut the blinds. They were unable to uncover much from the interview except that the neighbor often heard disputes between the victim and the potential assailant. 

“Sounds like a typical couple arguing,” Miller offered, leaning against the office wall. She looked exhausted as she pressed her head against the barrier.

“You and Joe ever fight?”

Her head shot straight up, her gaze fixated on him. “What?”

Hardy leaned back in his chair and knocked his glasses on the desk. “Tess and I had our rumbles, but not like the way the neighbor described these two.” 

Miller thought for a moment. “I suppose Joe and I didn’t fight.” An odd expression, something unfamiliar ghosted over her face. “It doesn’t count, does it? Joe and me.” 

“Miller,” Hardy began, but Miller put her hand up in self-defense, indicating that she was done talking about the situation. “What are we going to do about Harford then?”

“Bookkeeping. She can become a receptionist for all I care.” 

“I’m serious. I’m thinking we give her a light load after your bollocksing and then,” Hardy nodded his head back and forth, ready for Miller to attack, “we assign her another case.”

“Fuck that!” Miller practically spat at him. “Have her ruin another case?” 

“Miller, she’s not dumb, just inexperienced. We’ve all been there. Under our guidance and strict supervision, she’ll make a fine copper.” 

“She’s stupid.” 

“Ellie.”

Miller continued to shake her head as she charged out to the door and Hardy told her he wasn’t changing his mind.

&

That night, she wore a simple jumper, jeans, and her converse, and bagged a bottle of red across her shoulder. When she approached the door, she swallowed before knocking. She heard soft noises and footsteps before Alec opened the door. 

Inside, the house was chaotic, papers strewn around the living area. Hardy stood in the doorway, peering back over his shoulder at the state of his house.

“Alright with a bit of mess?” He asked. 

“You should see my place.” She shouldered past him with the wine, placing it on the ground near his kitchen. “What are you making?” 

“A curry,” he responded, returning to the kitchen, which smelled powerfully of spices that seemed to permeate Ellie’s nose. “Grab the wine.” 

They opened the bottle, toasted to another case together, and drank from their own respective glasses. Alec watched her intently, watched the way her throat shifted as she swallowed the wine, watched how she coiled a curl around her finger and brushed it back behind her ear. 

“What?” She asked, suddenly noticing his eyes gazing at her.

“Nothing.” He turned and hunched over the stove, stirred the curry. 

“Alec,” she drawled out. It wasn’t the wine talking, not yet at least. “I’ve been thinking.” 

He turned to face her, spoon in hand. 

“About your Tinder date.”

His brow furrowed as he stared at her, completely baffled. “My what?” 

Ellie smiled, taking a sip of her wine. “Your cheeky date.”

He turned away from her, muttering incoherencies, stirring the curry. 

“Are you still on Tinder? Have you matched with anyone? Katie told me how it works,” she was talking to herself, holding her glass close to her body.

“No,” he said stoically, turning to her. “No, I haven’t, and I don’t want to meet anyone.” He was blending dinner again, this time a bit more aggressively. “It was for Daisy.”

“Oi, you’re splattering.” 

“Am not!”

She noticed a flush of red blooming on his neck and ascending his cheeks. She reached toward his face, but he darted away from her hand. 

“I’m just checking to see if you’re hot. You’re flushed all of a sudden!” She insisted, moving toward him again. This time, Alec grabbed her wrist and caught her eye, his own dark and strangely insistent. Behind his expression was something new, an expression Ellie had never witnessed or perhaps had never noticed.

He leaned into her, but brusquely stopped, let go of her and went back to stirring the curry. 

“Alec.” She didn’t say his name to elicit a response, but she needed reassurance that whatever he was feeling was something she understood. 

It frightened her. Overwhelmed her, in fact. 

“Give me a moment and I’ll give you an update on the case.” His countenance was different. He was Hardy now, tall and reserved, the gruff, antagonistic bloke she knew from work. Not whoever just caught her eye and…

“Were you going to kiss me?” She restrained any nervousness in her voice. She reminded herself this was Alec, her boss, her best friend. Her _only_ friend. 

He sniffed, but didn’t immediately respond, his energy still on dinner now, presumably, overdone curry. He removed it from the burner and turned off the stove, pausing.

“Don’t want to grab a pint, but you want to kiss me?” She snorted, then grew somber. 

He turned his face back toward her again. Maybe there was something about him, the towering, broody Scottish bloke who was often difficult to work with and even more demanding to be friends with. He wasn’t Joe. He wasn’t the bloke she fucked while heavily intoxicated. That fellow sure looked like Hardy though, she thought. She bit her lip. Sure smelled like Hardy, too. 

At times, she ached to feel Joe’s resilient arms around her, rousing her first thing in the morning. To just sense his presence near her, to know she was loved. 

Alec tentatively touched her fingers resting on the kitchen counter. He could sense her hesitancy, but then she relented. 

Everything was slow. So demonstrative and calculated. 

He leaned forward, nuzzling her cheek with his nose and she didn’t draw away, didn’t brush his hand from hers. She felt his lips part when a phone buzzed, startling Ellie and Alec out of their enthralling trance. Both jumped nearly a foot apart from one another, instinctually looking for their mobiles. 

“It’s Fred,” Ellie said, pulling her mobile out of her purse. “Dad texted that Freddy won’t go down for the night.” 

At the sound of her voice, Alec exhaled deep within his lungs. He grated his hands through his hair and pulled back from her. His cheeks were ruddy and against his pallid skin his freckles constellated dark territories. 

“We can go over the case at yours.” 

&

The Pearce case appeared straightforward enough on paper, ghosts assume other transitory destinies. On paper, John’s girlfriend murdered him on a humid Saturday evening when the moon shown auburn and sunk low between the trees. The neighbors all echoed the same story: John and Shelley had a fraught relationship, but nothing out of the ordinary. They fought like normal couples but seemed happy and in love.

“Don’t like the looks of that,” Hardy said in reference to the eerie weather, rubbing his eyes as he scrolled through the files on his desktop. It was chance that the murder took place on a peculiar evening, but SOCO Brian twisted a joke into a ghoulish gallows’ joke. 

“The crazies come out on a full moon’s night.” He had said in his hazmat gear, his N95 mask over his chin. Shelley’s DNA soiled the apartment with its remnants of a story. 

“Something happened at that apartment, sir.” Harford stood near Miller as they hovered near Hardy’s desk. 

“A murder.” Hardy was tired just like they were all tired, but he didn’t understand Harford’s foreboding comment. She was intuiting the game of CID. Nothing was ever like it seemed. 

Harford internally rolled her eyes much like Miller often visibly did. “I mean, it’s not so straightforward. It looks like Shelley murdered her boyfriend, but why?” 

“Shelley’s claiming innocence,” Miller validated Harford’s claims, attempting to play nice. Harford looked over at Miller with her periphery. The younger detective had recently picked up on the tension between Miller and Hardy, the recent discarding of professionalism. Hardy had yelled at her about something and Miller had just walked away. 

“What’s going on?” Harford ask Miller once they were in the breakroom grabbing their lunch and a cuppa. “With you and DI Hardy?”

“Nothing.” Miller grabbed her cuppa and was about to walk out of the breakroom when Harford stopped her.

“DI Hardy said that…”

“I already know you and me are working the next case together.” Miller didn’t mean to sound aggressive to the younger detective, but Harford exasperated her nerves. Miller jaw was set square and tight. 

“I already know that you and Hardy work better together, but if we’re going to be working together....” 

“Just be professional and do your job, Katie,” Miller muttered and strolled past her toward Hardy’s desk. 

As Harford watched Miller walk into Hardy’s office, a smile pressed against Miller face as she drew the shades, Dirty Brian moved beside Harford. 

“Do you think they’re fucking?” He asked.

“What?” Harford replied, looking over at Dirty Brian, not quite registering the question. “Who?”

“Shitface and Miller.”

She cocked an eyebrow and thought about his question. “Oh, yeah. They’re definitely fucking. I just don’t want to tag team with Miller.” 

“She’s not that bad. Bring her sweets.” Brian commented. “What are you doing this weekend?”

“Why?” Harford looked Dirty Brian in the face, furrowing her brows. 

&

Hardy and Miller drove to John Pearce’s flat down high street. It was a posh flat with new lighting and fixtures; the kind advertised in high-end magazines. SOCO had already retrieved DNA and arrested John’s live-in girlfriend Shelley, who maintained her innocence.

“I was acting in self -defense,” Shelley had pleaded.

Something didn’t sit right with Miller. Initially, Hardy, Miller, and Harford speculated that it was a Black-Market operation. But when Shelley’s record came up clean, Hardy suggested contacting London. 

“Are you fucking serious?” Miller pounced. 

“They might know more about, er, the…” he turned to her and snapped his fingers. It was May and already hot, and Miller was miserable. “What’s the part of the internet? Google? They sell ammunition on it?”

“Oh, you’re thinking of the dark web.” Harford offered.

“Google?” Miller rolled her eyes at him. “Knob.”

“He does use a Blackberry.” Harford said in an offhanded way. She seemed nonplussed by Hardy’s behavior. Now that Hardy was up for the CS position, Harford was attempting to make peace with Miller. Better to make friends than enemies. 

“We don’t have anyone specialized to monitor criminal behavior on the…” he snapped again.

“Dark web,” Harford said.

“The dark web.” He sipped his tea. “What is the dark web?” Miller and Harford walked away, Harford shutting her mouth and Miller firmly keeping her gaze ahead. 

Now, several days later, Miller and Hardy were backtracking evidence at the Pearce residence. The heat was inexhaustible, flooding the length of the apartment as Miller kneeled and scraped around the tub and toilet once more. She sat up, brushing stray hairs away from her face with her wrist. 

“Be sure to check around the faucet again,” Hardy said coming up behind her. 

They hadn’t talked about what had happened between them or about much of anything. Once that boundary was almost crossed, Hardy seemed to internalize whatever grave mistake he must have made and reverted to his ill-tempered self. When he shouted at or stomped away from Miller now, there was no longer an illicit gaze or a proverbial apology. Now he merely stalked away. 

“Here you are, sir.” She handed him the collected evidence and removed the gloves from her hands. “I’m all sweaty.” She chuckled more to herself than to him. He looked at her then directed his attention back to the kitchen. “Fancy a pint later? We haven’t chatted in ages it seems.” 

He hesitated and examined her face. She smiled, exacerbating her grin at him. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Ellie.” 

She placed her hand over her stomach. “Haven’t heard you call me that privately in a while.” She said it so discreetly she didn’t think he would hear, but he halted his actions again. She licked her lips, but he didn’t stop or pay her any more attention. 

Just kept working. Just kept his attention elsewhere.

“Do you remember that lass I met on Tinder?” He asked her as they were ambling back to her car. “It was weird. Tinder.” 

“Why?” Part of her wanted to hear his answer, but another indistinct part of her didn’t want to know or understand this unchartered sector of their relationship. She had wondered about Hardy, had cautioned herself against entertaining the idea of him until he attempted to kiss her, and then something burst inside of her. Something manic and horrible. A desire that wanted to be loved by him. 

He ran his hand over his neck, scuffing his hair. They both opened their car doors and slid inside. “You ever do something to get your mind off something else?”

“Everyone does that,” Ellie said. She started the engine and then rubbed her eye. 

“Ellie.” He reached over and, ever hesitantly, ran his thumb over her cheek, drawing it toward him cautiously. He watched her eyes widen slightly as she faced him, and her throat stiffen as she swallowed. 

Both gradually and deliberately leaned toward the other until their forearms touched, the air conditioning teasing their hair into a calm current. His lips swept against hers first, soft and hot, but she parted hers against his once mouth skimmed skin. 

Ellie pulled away from him, a single tear brimming her right eye, and Alec tenderly cupped her cheek, an expression of serious earnestness on his face.

“Don’t say anything,” she whispered to him.

She put the car in first gear and drove to CID. 


	2. Summer/Waltzing in the Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miller and Hardy continue their investigation, and Harford confesses some key information to Miller. Alec tells Ellie something that changes the course of their relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “The declaration of love marks the transition from chance to destiny,” from _In Praise of Love_ by Alain Badiou
> 
> A few notes before readers dive into this chapter:
> 
> One reason why Broadchurch is so special, especially for the crime or noir genre, is how it tackles trauma and grief. None of the characters are heroic or virtuous; some are unlikeable. Narratively, S2 sets up several key elements, especially in terms of Miller and Hardy's relationship, and how Miller is processing grief (my personal beef is for a later date, maybe when I want to rage write on tumblr). S3 hints at this trauma-- Hardy is very clearly traumatized as is Miller-- but doesn't do anything with that trauma and how these characters process it, which is just bad writing. 
> 
> Subsequently, there are some very clear hints at processing in this story. I say I'm going to write something happy, but IDK, I come back to stuff like this. Plus, I'm not over the bad writing in S3.

Music for this chapter: [Waltzing in the Ashes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWiZxMf4L6s)

The nightmares intensified significantly over the summer months. 

That summer produced a heat wave unlike anything Broadchurch had witnessed, and most of the town erected permanent fixtures at the beach. It reminded Ellie of her childhood. Her youth linked to the sea, bathed in a pristine sepia tone.

At night and under fans, she perspired into her bedsheets. She dreamt of Joe during those long summer nights. When she woke, a dull duress subsided in her stomach until she took a sleeping pill and rolled over, back to sleep. 

She dreamt of Joe returning to her in the middle of the night, running his hand up her arm, skimming her shirtsleeve up until he touched her shoulder. She dreamt of her childhood, of Beth and Mark and Danny. 

She dreamt of Alec Hardy.

&

The heat seemed to dry up the canvas of Broadchurch. A scorching haze settled over the boardwalk downtown, and people in droves littered the beach until there was nothing but white thighs and sun hats. 

A stench hovered over the streets like claw marks in a gully. Waterfowl and litter sullied the trash near the beaches, and the humidity fastened the smell into a dome over the town.

Hardy’s mood only burdened CID with a niggling throb that ached to be touched. Like a toothache. Daisy had finished out the school year with the intention to stay in Broadchurch, only to change her mind at the last minute. He was convinced it was Tess badgering her, but his daughter reassured him otherwise. 

Daisy hadn’t left yet, buttering her toast that morning and eyeing her father who was readying himself for work. He told her they would talk about her summer holiday later. 

Then there was Miller. She told him she was busy, but there was something else nipping at her heels. Her demeanor had changed around the time he asked her for help with the Sandbrook case, a situation he was convinced had overtaxed her. 

“It didn’t, so shut up” she smiled at him, then gestured and laughed. It was Miller, but a different Miller. When he walked away, he looked over his shoulder at her bracing her neck with her right hand and teething a pencil. She often looked apprehensive now or snapped at him if he came up behind her, and then she grasped her hips too tightly. 

Once she nearly slapped him, but it wasn’t a jovial Hardy and Miller banter. She didn’t recognize him in the dark stairwell and mistook him for someone else. 

“What’s going on, Ellie?” He later asked her quietly. She was working furiously, scrambling through documents on the Pearce case, which was going nowhere but into oblivion.

“Nothing,” she said caustically. Then she turned and smiled and acted like nothing happened.

The same Ellie. 

They had been casually seeing each other for a month now and any intimation of intimacy was stalled on her part. What were they, Hardy wasn’t quite sure and Miller never wanted to talk about it. 

“I want it to be special,” she first told him to most recently, “I’m not in the mood.” He was over at hers, watching an old episode of _Prime Suspect_ , when he reached for her and she instinctively balked and then breathed deeply. 

“It’s the show,” she quickly added. 

“If it’s Joe…”

“No.” She got up and walked into the kitchen, neither of them breathing a word. 

&

By July, Shelley sat in a cell, unwilling to cooperate except to insist her innocence. Harford insisted a less tactical approach—applying more pressure in interviews-- until Miller told her to shut up. 

“What did you say?” Harford asked, suddenly incredibly irritated. Both women were out of their blazers and sweat beaded across their hairlines. 

“You heard me,” Miller said. 

PC Bob suddenly looked nervous and sweaty, but not solely due to the heat. He took a sip of his tea, his eyes darting feverishly between the two women. Harford raised her hands, shook them both at Miller, and walked out of the bullpen, muttering under her breath so everyone could hear.

“Maybe you just need a good shag by DC Hardy to fix everything?”

Suddenly, Miller’s cheeks flushed, and she turned on her heel, storming after Harford into the breakroom. Both women were fuming. 

“What the fuck did you say that for?” Miller spat at her.

“Everyone knows you’re fucking the boss. We all know that’s why you get the perks you do.”

Miller scoffed. “What perks? Where’s my bonus or my childminder?” Miller’s arms flung about her and she accidently knocked a mug off the breakroom counter, which shattered into pieces on the ground. “You have no business making that accusation, you ungrateful little…” Miller stopped herself, grabbed the counter, and exhaled. 

“What? Say it.” Harford jutted out her chin. “I know that you’ve wanted to since the Winterman case.”

“No. You’re reactive and unskilled at the job because you’re young, but I won’t let you do this.” Miller wiped tears from her eyes. “You’re just young and stupid, Harford.” Miller turned to walk out.

“You know that you have to tell HR if you’re dating Hardy.”

Miller stopped and slowly turned around. “Why would you say that?”

“Because I reported you both.” Harford brushed past Miller, knocking her shoulder as she did. Then she stopped and looked at her. “You’ve been awful to me and then you go do this?” Harford shook her head. “You and Hardy deserve each other.” 

&

For the rest of the workday, Miller kept her head down. She ignored Hardy unless he needed to speak to her about work, and when he called her into his office, she made sure his door and blinds were open. 

_What’s this all about_ , he finally texted her before the end of the day. Harford was packing up, her eyes darting between Miller stationary at her desk and Hardy who was peeking out between his blinds. 

_What?_

_You haven’t called me an arsehole all day._

She didn’t respond. Instead, when Harford headed toward the exit, Miller called toward her and asked the young detective to meet her outside. 

They sky was gloomy and overcast, a miserable day in Broadchurch. Miller saw Harford leaning against her car and hesitantly approached her.

“What do you want? Are you bribing me for something?” Miller began, folding her arms against her chest.

Harford stammered for an answer, and then cautiously said, “I didn’t mean to fuck up the Winterman case. If anyone should understand, you should.” 

“What the hell does that mean?” 

Harford shuffled with her keys, looking down. “In the Latimer report, it says that you didn’t know about… your husband.” 

Miller inhaled sharply. 

“There are lots of things I don’t know about my dad.” 

When Miller looked up, Harford was crying. Miller rolled her eyes, more out of her own resolute tenderness toward the young girl than the fact that Harford brought up Joe. 

“If you’re manipulating me, I swear I won’t hesitate to bollocks you again,” Miller said, pointing her finger at Harford, but then softened. “I get it. I didn’t know about Joe.” 

Harford shifted nervously before she added, “I did tell HR. About you and Hardy.”

“Jesus Christ, Katie. You are bloody stupid.” Miller sighed. “What did you say?”

“I just said that I had suspicion to believe that you two are involved.” 

“What proof do you have?”

Harford dug in her pocket, retrieved her phone, and scrolled through her photos until she found one. She showed the photo to Miller of her and Hardy kissing in Miller’s car in the CID parking lot. 

“Were you spying on us?” Miller grabbed Harford’s phone and looked at the photo more closely. 

“No, ma’am.” 

“Then why take the photo?”

“The rulebook clearly states no fraternizing between employees, especially between subordinates. You yourself have told about the mistakes you and DI Hardy made during the Latimer case, and insisted you two weren’t having an affair. This could blow your cover.” 

Miller’s weight fell back on her heel as she realized that, despite Miller’s own personal frustrations with Harford, the younger woman was correct. She gave Harford’s phone back to her. 

“So, in an indirect way, you’re trying to protect us?”

Harford screwed up her face. “No. I’m trying to do my job. I don’t give a fuck if you and Hardy are… whatever… but I don’t want it jeopardizing CID.” 

Miller nodded, her own internal vexations with Harford simmering. “We’re not really dating,” she quickly added. 

“I should probably tell you then that Dirty Brian has a pool on you and Hardy.”

&

Miller was seething when she showed up at Hardy’s place. She called her dad, telling him she would be home late due to work only to receive a curt response from him. Of course, he would be happy to watch the boys, but she was spending too much time with that DI Hardy. 

Wasn’t she already accused of having an affair with him? Wasn’t this behavior suspicious?

She shrugged off her father’s disdain, got out of her vehicle, and lugged herself up toward Hardy’s house and promptly pounded her fist on the door. 

“What,” he demanded, jarring the door open. “Oh. Miller.” 

They stood awkwardly looking at each other until she asked him if he was going to let her in. He moved out of her way and she practically stampeded into the house. 

“Daisy here?” 

“She’s over at Chloe’s.”

“Did Katie speak to you?” She asked, pacing about his house, her hands on her hips. Hardy went to grab a glass and some whiskey, which he handed toward her. “Thanks.” 

“No.” 

“She reported us to HR under the pretense…” she stopped herself. She didn’t know what she and Hardy were, so she bit her tongue. 

“What?” It was then that she noticed he was still in his suit, still linked back to work. Not that she hadn’t dashed to Hardy’s straight from Harford’s news, but here he was, always a spectacle of professionalism. Unable to leave work behind.

Miller fumbled for words. “She took a photo of us in your car!” 

Hardy shrugged, ignorant of Miller’s implications. They were frequently together; there was no denying that. 

Miller’s hands curled into fists. “She reported us for dating and unprofessional conduct, you twat!”

“We’ve never been unprofessional,” was Hardy’s earnest reply. 

Miller sighed. “The photo was of us from,” she gestured with her head, “the other day.” 

Hardy crinkled his nose, attempting to recollect what Miller was referencing, which only made the already enraged woman in front of him more frustrated. 

“We had breakfast in the car…”

“Oi! Right, but we didn’t do anything.”

“It doesn’t matter. Harford reported us to protect her job.” She plopped herself on his sofa, heaving out a heavy sigh. Hardy joined her, eyeing her suspiciously. 

“We should think about discussing this with HR.” 

“What? How can you agree with her?” Miller’s eyes widened at him, but less out of anger and more distressed. 

“Aren’t we… dating?” 

Distraught, Miller suddenly stood up from the sofa and bound into the kitchen, catching herself on the kitchen cabinet. An unrecognizable force stung deep inside her stomach; her sternum pounded until she thought it would crack beneath the pressure of her fingertips. Visions of Joe seared her vision and all she felt was sudden scorching anger. 

“Ellie.” His voice was distant. Like a mirage. She turned suddenly. “Are you okay?” 

She didn’t know if she was okay or why this gentle familiarity with Alec was so tumultuous for her. At the thought, she abruptly realized she was clenching the countertops and hyperventilating through her mouth. 

“Ellie.” He repeated and came up and ran his hand up and down her forearm. “It’s okay if you don’t want to. We can clear it up with HR tomorrow.” 

She shook her head no. The vision of Joe’s face melted from her mind’s eye into her former boss, the one she thought she loved, then blurred into that bloke she fucked. She turned from Hardy and sighed. 

“Could I have a moment?” She finally coughed out. 

“Of course.” 

&

Alec stood in the kitchen, his hands deep into his pockets, as Ellie put the kettle on. He had left her in the kitchen, moving to the living room where he was looking over files for the Pearce case. He periodically glanced up toward the solitary stove top light that radiated through into the living room.

Whatever caused these disruptions in their relationships, whatever harmed Ellie, he wanted to mend those wounds. If she would allow him.

They decided to get takeout. She was Ellie again, charming and effervescent, returning smiles and laughter. She was cleaning up after they ate, when she felt something soft and warm against her middle. Alec pressed his body against her back, running his hands up and down her waist. She paused, an initial instinctive desire to push him away, but then she felt herself lean back, drawn toward him. This kiss was hesitant, a simple brush of lips against lips; an attempt to learn one another. Then Alec cupped her jaw and tipped her face up toward him, skimming his tongue against her lips. 

They smiled at one another. 

He gently urged her forward, running his palms against her hips, her arse, and finally the zip of her jeans. 

“Ellie,” he whimpered against her neck, and she pulled him down toward her, reciprocating his movements with a kiss. When she pulled the zip of her jeans down, they collapsed onto the kitchen floor. 

It was frenzied, a sheer moment of panicked lovemaking as if neither of them had been touched before nor would be touched ever again. Alec nuzzled her nose, whispered against her skin that he loved her, but she urged him to fuck her. Fuck her hard. 

He leaned back, his hands shaking as he grasped her jeans and tried to tug them down her legs.

“Help me,” he stuttered, and Ellie raised her hips, wrenching her jeans and pants down her legs until they caught on her feet. It didn’t matter; he pressed his body against hers again, kissing her ardently.

“I love you.”

“Fuck me.” 

He reached for his own zip, his trembling hand barely pushing his trousers down far enough to reach inside. Ellie’s legs already wrapped around his hips, pleading. 

Each moment he attempted to slow their progress, to touch her, to taste her, to smell her, she urged him on. Neither one was quite ready, but both braced against one another as Alec fucked her right there on the kitchen floor. 

“I can’t…” she trembled underneath his hand grasping her waist. He shifted slightly and she gasped, a strange cry leaving her throat. Alec pulled out just as she began to weep, grabbing a nearby tea towel. 

Gasping, they lay on the floor, Ellie unable to look at him, Alec reaching for her, unable to leave her. Her head fell into the alcove of her palm and she exhaled deeply. 

“Don’t,” she said as Alec reached for her, an overwhelming need to hold her.

“Ellie, please.” He touched her bare knee instead. “Did I hurt you?”

She shook her head no and pulled herself up to sit against one of the kitchen cabinets. He moved closer to her, running his hand up and down her back. “Did we…”

“Alec,” she stopped him. He sat near her, helpless. 

“I meant what I said. I didn’t want it like this, but,” he held her elbow at least, “why do you think I was on bloody Tinder?”

She allowed the silence to draw the question from her, the realization that he was in love with her dawning on her. “Since when?”

He leaned against the cabinet, near where she was sitting. “Since I found out about Joe.”

She cleared her throat, placing her hand on his clothed knee. “Don’t love me because I’m a murderer’s…”

“Oh, piss off, Ellie.” He attempted to initiate intimacy again and this time she allowed him to place his arm about her shoulders. “I couldn’t… you’re more than that.” He sputtered before apologizing about the tea towel.

“Shut up.” She looked up at him, his lips red and swollen, and she kissed him. “Do you really mean that about when you realized you loved me?” 

He nodded. “You’re not Joe’s wife.” This time when he drew her to him, she didn’t pull away. 

&

Shelley was twenty-years old, a barista at one of the local cafes. She originally wanted to pursue kinesiology or sport’s medicine but dropped out of university her second semester.

She was adamantly silent about certain topics, Hardy and Miller found. They tag teamed interviews, but Shelley was obstinate. Over the course of a month on the case, they found their energies were expended on other cases as Shelley appeared perceptibly guilty of the murder of John Pearce.

Except, as Harford pointed out early on in their investigation, something was clearly off. 

The neighbors noted that the couple fought, and Shelley’s parents divorced due to her father’s indiscretions. He was caught abusing her when she was fifteen-years old. 

“When did Shelley start dating John?” Miller asked. She, Hardy, and Harford were seated around one of the bullpen desks with several other detectives. The case needed to be laid to rest, figuratively speaking, but as the hour wore on, they weren’t closer to an answer.

Harford pulled out a file. “She was sixteen.” 

“That might be important.” 

Harford glanced at Miller, a question on her face. 

“Could be a motive,” Miller answered for her. 

“Shelley was abused, enters into another abusive relationship, and doesn’t see a recourse out.” Hardy said, hand on his hip, pacing back and forth. 

“Could be. Some women see violence as a recourse out of an abusive relationship.” Miller added. 

“But why the kidneys?” Harford asked for all attending. “Just seems kind of… brutal.” 

“And where are the kidneys?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you figure out the famous historical reference in this story, I will send you internet hearts!


	3. Autumn/Ashes in the Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the Pearce case closes, a familiar case opens. Ellie begins to reconcile with her trauma from Joe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Yesterday I dreamt about you. I hardly remember the details, just that we kept on merging into one another, I was you, you were me,” from _Letters to Milena_ by Franz Kafka
> 
> There is one more part, which wraps up the case and the Ellie/Alec dynamic. The third part, which is pretty short at this junction, examines my take on Joe Miller. I will then put this beast to rest.

Song for this chapter: [Ashes in the Wind](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKiWy22FYww)

The sea tortured the landscape and harbored the shore with taciturn desolation that autumn. That September, wind and rain battered the coast until only locals remained, and reports warned that the winter could bring an alarmingly frigid front. 

The Pearce case was on the border of closing. 

Shelley sat across from Hardy and Miller, the young woman’s solicitor reviewing the case and going over Shelley’s sentence. She would be offered life in prison with the possibility of parole, dependent upon behavior and counseling. 

Shelley was silent. Her lips were slightly ajar and occasionally, she wiped a solitary tear away with one of her fingers. 

“I guess I just want to say,” she began, her chin wobbling, “I didn’t want to…” she shrugged her shoulders, indicating the nefarious act that landed her in the position she now faced. “I didn’t know what else to do. Who would believe me?” She asked. The question appeared rhetorical until she looked at everyone sitting at the deposition table. 

“There are always alternatives, Shelley,” Hardy began, but Miller reached for his forearm. Miller wondered if she had been in the same position as Shelley, if Miller could have been capable of the same act. If Joe had hurt her boys, she pondered the noose that remained weighted about her neck. 

Later, Ellie voiced this thought to Alec who didn’t immediately respond. He knew she was wrestling with the aftermath of Joe’s behavior, and to vocalize that she was different than Shelley seemed unfair. 

“What do you mean?” He finally asked, as though to say, help me understand. They were in Alec’s office, weighing the consequences of several deciding factors that loomed large over their heads. 

“People become desperate. Shelley was desperate. She’s the victim in this situation.” They were once again in familiar positions, squaring off against one another. “Would I be capable of killing Joe if he hurt Tom or Fred?” 

“I don’t think we can speculate,” he finally said. 

Ellie pursed her lips with frustration, but eventually dropped it. “I think you should take the offer.”

Alec’s gaze drifted up toward her. “From Jenkinson?” 

Ellie nodded. It had been an area of contention from the moment they had might several years ago, one that often festered between them. “You have more experience and, besides, you can retire to bookkeeping,” she smirked. 

“That’s what it is, then?” Alec turned to his computer and began scrolling. Despite his tone, she noticed a glimmer of a grin curl upward at his mouth. “I’ve been thinking,” he began, but he didn’t turn toward her. His voice was caved inward to the computer, so Ellie leaned slightly to him. 

“What have you been thinking?” Her phone buzzed. A text from Tom. Football cancelled that evening due to weather.

“I spoke with Jocelyn about your situation. Your marriage.” 

“Cozying up with Jocelyn, are you?” She knew where this was going, a topic she had hoped to avoid, but with all intents and purposes, Alec had been navigating toward. 

“Do you like this?” He situated the computer monitor so she could see the image of a simple necklace with a teardrop diamond. “It wouldn’t be traditional…”

“Alec,” she interrupted. She reached for his hand and he offered it in return. “I don’t know if I’m quite there yet.” 

He nodded and closed out of the image. 

&

In the night, Ellie’s phone buzzed from the depths of her sheets. Clumsily, she fumbled with her hands as she searched for her mobile, sleep hanging heavily around her eyes. She yawned and noticed Hardy’s text. 

_I’m outside. Daiz is asleep_.

It was preternaturally cold out, hoarfrost clinging desperately to every corporeal surface with bodily might. As though the world itself was dawning a strange new breath. 

He was standing outside her front door in his coat, shaking against the bitter wind. 

“Get inside,” she hissed as he practically leapt into the heat of her house. “Hey.” She smiled and kissed him. “Over for a sleepover?”

“You could call it that.” He returned her kiss and they quietly darted upstairs toward Ellie’s bedroom, their hands clasped. 

They hadn’t told their respective offspring yet, fearful of what their reactions might be and what their own futures held. 

“We can’t be loud,” she whispered as she attempted to unfasten his clothing. He was, somehow, still in his suit. 

He nodded, kissing her, and backing her towards her bed. 

Hardy always followed her lead, always tried to listen to her intuition, as difficult as that might be at moments like these. It began to rain outside, the droplets striking the windowpane hard enough to deafen any noises emanating from the two people striking soft chords. 

He was behind her, kissing down the back of her neck towards the middle of her backbone, brushing away her hair to stare at the contours of her spine flexing and stirring underneath him. He ran his hand up the side of her ribs and caved around her shoulder blade, slowing her slightly. 

In the dark, freckles constellated her back like a microscopic galaxy. 

Only stilted light darted through curtains opaquely. 

He felt himself overwhelmed, pressing his face against her skin, and breathing deeply until he couldn’t ignore her shifting herself underneath him anymore. He moved himself upwards, kissing her cheek and jaw.

“Tell me what you want,” he implored. His right hand entreated an exploration of her body as she moaned underneath him, her own hands gripping the bed sheets until she couldn’t bear his fondling any longer. 

“You,” she whispered into the kiss. 

Alec began slowly, hovering over her body, internalizing the energy deriving from her building energy. They were still discovering one another, still ascertaining elusive certainties about the other. 

With each throaty reverberation or stirring caress, Alec increased pressure, interlacing his fingers through hers. Sweat pearled on her back, ornamenting it until Alec draped his body against Ellie’s, uniting their bodies together in perspiration. 

The rain pelleted the house. Ellie shook her hair aside, Alec searching in earnest for closer proximity to her until she brought his thumb to her mouth and bit it gently. 

“What was that?” He paused. She smiled. 

“Tell me that you love me,” Ellie murmured. Neither was sated. Neither was finished. 

Alec stroked her hair away from her neck, pressing kisses to her damp skin. “I love you.” 

&

In the night, the rain halted in its tracks and froze to buildings, its trajectory stalled in course. Everything became stilled and stunted overnight. 

Ellie awoke around half past three and shook Alec’s shoulder, alerting him that he should consider getting up soon so that he could drive back home. With weary eyes, he stared at her in the darkness. 

“When should we tell the kids?” He yawned, rubbing his eyes and searching for his glasses. He had been the one to bring this topic up, had been the one to propose solidifying their relationship after the debacle with Harford. 

Ellie leaned back in bed, her forearm slung over her forehead. “I don’t know.” 

He reached for her, his hand roaming her stomach. He uttered her name, a question without an answer. 

“I’m worried you want things I can’t give you.” She finally said, placing her hand over his. Nothing was ever understood but everything was asked in those early morning discussions. 

“What?” 

“I’ve failed as a mother. I don’t want to get married again. I’m not sure I know what I want.” Her eyes were dark and contemplative and exhausted in the night. 

“I wasn’t there for Daisy. I was an awful husband.” 

“It seems…” she paused his hand. “You want more.” He busied his face into the alcove of her neck, uncertain of the expression on his face betraying him. “I can’t give you those things, Alec.” She combed her fingers through his hair, soothing him through the hardened answer. 

Later, when she woke several hours later, the warm indentation from a familiar body remained beside her. She ran her hand over the hollowed predicament. 

Fred ran into her room, jumped into her bed, and curled tight into the concave of her body. He smelled sweet and she fingered his baby curls away from his forehead to kiss the soft skin by his temple. 

She had wanted her children, had pleaded for Fred, and had yearned for more. But wariness proved ironic given what life would produce. 

Tom stumbled into her room, rubbing his eyes and yawning, asking why DI Hardy was downstairs in their kitchen. 

Ellie shot straight up in bed, knocking Fred over in the process. “What did you say?”

“DI Hardy is downstairs. He’s making breakfast.” Tom mumbled, then turned and walked out of her room as Fred darted out the bedroom door and practically plowed downstairs, screaming about Uncle Alec in the process. 

Panic encapsulated Ellie’s heart, which beat rapidly in its ribbed cage. She wanted to simultaneously throttle the idiot and wrap her arms about his narrow frame. In one bleak moment, everything was taken swiftly out of her hands. 

Instead, she slowly wandered down to her kitchen and found the smug Scottish bloke plopping toast onto a plate in front of Tom and Fred. 

Hoarfrost was painted alongside the windows, and Alec commented that Broadchurch was shut down due to the uncanny weather. Ellie drew back the kitchen curtain and noticed the ashen sky, a foreboding tale. 

Fred screamed in an uproar and Tom told him to hush before asking Alec if he got stuck at their house due to the weather. Alec eyed Ellie, who rushed into the kitchen and sat down beside her boys. She grinned but then made a face at Alec. 

“DI Hardy stopped by last night,” she began, grabbing the mug Alec offered her, “because…” Dread overtook her as she looked at her boys. Tom, who still wasn’t recovered from his father’s abandonment, and Fred, who would never know Joe. “Because…”

“Mum, you can say it. Daisy and I have a bet on it.” Tom said, shoveling toast into his mouth. 

“A bet?” 

Fred didn’t quite understand the undertones of the conversation, including Tom’s apathetic reaction to Alec sitting down next to Ellie. 

“We wagered five quid you two are dating.” Tom licked his fingers and grabbed another slice of toast. Ellie looked at Alec’s indiscernible back. 

“Who won?” Ellie finally asked. 

“Daisy.”

&

At CID, a file landed portentously on Miller’s desk, scattering a few papers. “Strickland” was scrawled on the cover and Hardy said she needed to inspect the report as soon as she had time. 

Miller and Hardy had uncovered a body in a brush, but Hardy suspected the connection between the deceased prepubescent girl and this case. 

“Okay?” He asked her and she nodded in response. “What about Tom?” This question he added quickly and quietly. 

“Not taking the news too well.” 

“It’s a hard age, Miller, and he’s the man of the house.” Hardy offered. 

Miller deliberately looked around the bullpen, assessing everyone’s positions in relation to her and Hardy. “I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive me or reconcile what Joe did. I don’t know if I can either.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t make sense. What Joe did.” 

Hardy grasped her shoulder, soothing her. 

“I think of what this girl did. Shelley,” she added clarifying. “Her boyfriend is raping and beating her. Why isn’t the law on her side?” The question appeared rhetorical to Hardy until he noticed a glint of discomfort in Miller’s eyes. A hint of frustration coloring her irises. 

“The law is on her side. She can appeal…”

“Alec, the law isn’t on her side.” Rather than listen to Hardy, she got up from her chair and wandered off. 

&

It snowed in early November, a cluttering of white and mud assembled. _I can’t reconcile this in my head_ , Ellie texted Alec one night before she shut off her phone. 

The earth resplendent in decay until it would gasp for life once again. 

&

_I love you, but I don’t know how to love you_. 


	4. Winter/Leaving the Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Miller and Hardy close the Pearce case, and Ellie finds an important document that links her back to Joe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You were my death/you I could hold/ when all fell away from me,” from “You were my death” by Paul Celan
> 
> Thanks so much to everyone for reading this _thing_! 
> 
> There is one final installment; the details are posted at the end. As I've mentioned, the way _Broadchurch_ examines trauma and grief is incredibly fascinating, and S1 does this so well. In S2, it hints that Ellie is really struggling, but then it sort of sweeps that all under the rug.   
> This last chapter syncs together what traumatizes Ellie (I come up with a catalyst linking the trauma back to Joe) and how the trauma is manifested. I'm not sure I do it well, but my biggest frustration in any piece of literature (I'm looking at you, Karen Russell) is when a writer doesn't examine the reverberations of trauma. Hence why one chapter turned into a trilogy.

Music for this chapter: [Leaving the Ground](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWscwx6EcQw)

Snow fell like ash, covering the tundral earth into a scorched oblivion. 

A world like this was reconciled for something messianic or doomed, open to the abyss for Leviathan. Its ill-fated temporality ceaseless. 

Cracks in the ice exposed animals succumbed to providence in the cold, their eyes open and glossy. 

Miller, layered in a goose down coat, brushed past the CID team to stare at the bundle once buried deep beneath the soil. The remnants were irrefutable. Blood stains sullied the dug dirt around the closed-off perimeters, and the two distinct organs in the package were discolored and reeked of rot. 

She covered her nose with her mittened hand and turned away, the stench overpowering. 

Hardy had told her about the smell death emitted, but it was a scent she would never get used to. Sickly sweet and porous. It clung to everything near it. 

Forensics carefully seized the parcel with the kidneys, securing the area off with police tape as Miller wandered over to where Harford stood. Their rows were less frequent now that CID knew that Miller and Hardy were together, and Harford was handling this new case—a dead girl named Grace Strickland—professionally. Actual competence, Miller had rolled her eyes. 

“Where’s CS Hardy, ma’am?” Harford asked. She was visibly cold, shaken by this abrupt wave of weather that seemed to seep into their bones and tendons. 

“He took off today. Paperwork.” 

Hardy was meeting with Jocelyn today about Miller’s divorce from Joe, attempting to circumnavigate Joe altogether. 

Miller told Harford to get into the car and turn the heat on full blast. Miller would return to the car in a moment, once she had spoken with SOCO.

Underneath Miller’s layers, a modest teardrop diamond lay flat against her chest. A reminder. 

&

Ellie was called to Tom’s school shortly after Fred inconspicuously started calling Alec “dad.” Tom had landed himself in the headmaster’s office when he landed a blow to another boy’s cheek. Fuming, Ellie escorted Tom to the car, nearly dragging her eldest by the shirt collar, muttering fury under her breath with every compounded step. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you? I thought we were past this?” She shouted in the car, not daring to look Tom in the eye. Alec was trying everything in his knowledge to connect with Tom, but every step forward knocked the relationship backward it seemed. 

Tears betrayed her eldest, who hastily wiped them away. “He said something about you.” 

She groaned. “Who? What did he say?”

“Mitch.” The tears kept betraying Tom. “Called you a slag.” 

Ellie ran her tongue over her teeth, nearly biting the meaty muscle in the process. “Tom, whatever students say at your school, you can’t just hit someone in the face.” She reached over and encased Tom’s hand in her own. “You’re not in trouble. Thank you.” 

Tom looked at her surprised. She brushed the tears away from his cheek.

They drove in silence for some time, before Tom asked her, “Did you cheat on Dad with Alec?”

The question felt like a blow to her gut. Broadchurch and the surrounding countryside were covered in a substantial nine inches of snow that felt compacted into their lives suddenly. The weather ominous and strange. 

Ellie pulled over into a nearby lot, put the car in park, and looked at her son face on this time. 

“I loved your Dad,” she began. Snow flurries cascaded in the air and littered the windshield. “What happened, with Danny’s death and the trial, was not what I expected or wanted. I thought your Dad and I would grow old together.” She realized her chin was wobbling. “I thought you and Freddy would be safe, and your Dad and me would live… well…” she fetched a few tears with her fingers. “I thought a lot of things.” 

When she looked at Tom, she noticed his eyes and nose were hot and red. She reached out to him, taking his hand in her own once again. How she and Tom had grown apart since the trial, how their relationship had relapsed and fallen. She hadn’t noted until one day when she realized, dumbstruck, that Tom looked so like his father and that awful internal agony returned to assail at her sternum once more. 

“Why Alec?” He asked, looking down at his lap. 

“He understands.” She paused, ruminating on her choice of words. “Love, you don’t have to feel anything toward him. You don’t have to like him. I know it makes you uncomfortable that Fred…”

“Alec isn’t Freddy’s dad!” His hands clenched ruthlessly in the alcove of his mother’s hands. 

“I think that’s Fred’s choice,” Ellie offered. She brushed Tom’s cheek with her finger before drawing him to her, hugging him close. “You have a choice too, my love. We all do.” 

&

It was December, Christmas joy in the air. The sun was hazy behind a periphery of clouds foreboding a sense of kismet in the air. The scent dust.

But given the onslaught of recent investigations, Broadchurch managed to search and unearth its Christmas spirit. Houses were obscured by shimmering lights and protected with the lighted nativity scenes. Red bodied Santas stood in front of many doors and windows, and lit Christmas candles adorned many windows for Advent. 

Hardy and Miller were busy with the Strickland case and closing the Pearce case to give much needed attention to Christmas, although Ellie knew her boys would want a festively decorated home. Now that Joe was gone and she was attempting to bridge the gaps between two families, it seemed apropos to unionize the Hardys and Millers with a lavish Christmas. 

Except something was weighing heavily on her mind. 

Since she had started therapy again, the fear of Joe reemerging into her life felt preordained. It wasn’t if Joe would appear again; it was when. The nightmares, the intense materialization of pain in her body, the resistance to Alec. It had all made sense. 

She hadn’t discussed these fears with Alec, apprehensive of how he might react. 

Ellie already knew that Mark had hunted Joe down, squarely facing him off only to find that Joe was nobody. A pathetic illusion of someone who Ellie once knew. Joe wasn’t a villain, except that he did villainous acts. And Ellie hated him for that. She hated that Joe was a coward who took the easy way out and still denied his behavior. 

That, in Joe’s mind, he deserved pity. 

In Alec’s mind, Joe was a villain. If Alec truly knew the nature of Ellie’s distress, she wondered what Alec might do. 

As much as Ellie hated Joe, she wondered if Alec could hate him more than she hated Joe. And that thought, surfacing recently in the forethought of her brain, apprehended her train of thinking. If she could kill Joe, then what was Alec capable of? 

“Forensics came back. Kidneys belong to Mr. John Pearce.” Hardy tossed the sealed manila file on Miller’s desk. They were working late before Christmas, patching together the final needlework on the Pearce case. 

“Why don’t you take Harford in with you?” 

“To interview Shelley?” Hardy’s face screwed into a knot of contemplation. 

Miller nodded. “It would be good for her. She’s doing well on the Strickland case, but that could be circumstantial.” 

He reached out and traced the outline of her forefinger nearest to him. “It’s nice to work with you.”

“Hardy and Miller together again?” She smiled at him. 

He pulled away then, pocketing his hand. “You know this isn’t going to end well. For Shelley.” 

“The justice system is never on the side of the abused,” she finished for him and he concurred. 

&

At night, the coastal wind howled and whistled so fiercely that Ellie often woke in the middle of the night to its brutal song. She lay in bed, worrying her thoughts into a loop of anxieties. 

“El?” Surfaced the question from the body near her. He was groggy, but awaking.

“Nothing. Go back to bed.”

“You sighed.” He rolled over, his eyes still shut. The wind rattled the windowpanes, then momentarily ceased, breathing deeply against the house. 

She debated about telling him her concerns. Had debated about telling him for some time and had only gestured through brief interludes. Sparse moments of uncertainty when she hinted that all was not well. 

Then she felt him reach for her hand. “Do you ever think about Joe coming back?” 

“Yeah.” He rubbed the sleep from his face. 

“What do you think about?” 

“What he might do. What we’d do.” His eyes slowly fluttered open. Her head sagged over in the pillow to gaze at him. 

“Tell me.” 

In the dark, she watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple shifting with each movement. “He’d want to see you and the boys. Probably saying the same shit, that he wasn’t in the wrong.” He looked over at her. “Perps don’t think they’re in the wrong.” 

“I know.” 

He touched her face, touched a strand of her hair. “We could try to arrest him or…”

“Don’t do anything stupid, Alec.” Claw marks scorched her sternum, the harbinger of memories Joe tainted her with. The body doesn’t forget, her therapist told her. She pressed against her breastbone, willing the burning heart pain to dissipate. 

“I’ve been talking with Jocelyn about putting a restraining order on him. It can’t do much, but it’s something.” 

“Do you think he lives with his guilt?” When the wind snuck up and battered against their house again, Ellie shuttered. 

“No. I don’t think he feels guilt.” 

Ellie wanted Joe to feel guilt for what he had done, to synchronize with the agony she had felt over the years. In those moments that he had confessed to Alec, it appeared that he felt something akin to remorse, but then he heatedly peddled backwards to an emotion Ellie wasn’t acquainted with until Shelley’s case.

After her lover had abused her, Shelley had cut out his kidneys and buried them to manifest the wrath and pain she felt. She risked her entire life to expose the agony inside. 

And Ellie sympathized with the young woman. Ellie _understood_ her. 

The very thought sickened Ellie, and she rolled over, away from Alec in case he permeated her thoughts and read the gory details. 

She felt him rest his palm on her back, the obscurity of his touch blinded by the fabric of her shirt. At that moment, wrapped in her thoughts, she allowed him to reach for her and sensation of his touch soothed the frenzy of her mind. 

&

On Christmas Day, Freddy awoke early and scampered into Alec and Ellie’s bedroom, bounding onto the bed with a leap. He landed directly in the middle of the two of them before snuggling into his mother, informing her that it was Christmas morning. 

“Right you are, my love,” she replied. 

Her nightmares flitted through the night, and last night they were vivid screenshots of recollections she yearned to forget. 

Her subconscious managed to compound the memory of Alec informing her that Joe murdered Danny over her brain’s distilled conception of Fred’s first Christmas. Somehow her hippocampus produced an eerie hallucination of Alec telling her that Joe had killed Fred. 

The images were distorted through the lens of her brain, the region responsible for memories and dreams. She wasn’t Ellie in her dream and Alec wasn’t Alec. Instead, they were illusions of themselves, just as the Joe she saw was some ghoulish version of her former husband. 

Awake now, she breathed Fred’s hair and skin, smelling his familiar baby scent. Fred grounded her, erasing enough of the nightmare’s hold on her so that she could put those thoughts aside and focus on the festivities for the day. 

After breakfast, Daisy was due for Christmas dinner and planned on staying with Alec and Ellie for several days. Ellie was making a few final arrangements in the room Daisy would be staying in when Ellie opened the drawer of the bureau. Underneath the linens, she spotted an envelope with a letter in it. Tentatively, she opened the envelope, her fingers tracing the cream- colored paper. 

_Dear Ellie, I don’t know how to say this…_

The letter began. The letter was not overt but implied enough. He was tired. He was miserable. He felt neglected. He didn’t want Tom the way she had wanted him. There was nothing in the letter that suggested his pedophilia. In fact, he talked about the lack of sexual intimacy in their relationship and feared it would worsen with their second child on the way. She scanned the lines looking for any hint or any suggestion foretelling what was to come. 

Instead, it was about them. Her and Joe. In his scrawled lettering, he unleashed all the things he had wanted to say to her in the final months before they had Fred. That in those moments, he felt unloved. 

She stared at the letter, her eyes repeatedly scanning the words. It all seemed too uncanny. 

“El.”

Startled, she looked up, putting her hands and the letter behind her back, out of sight. It was Alec, leaning around the doorframe, staring at her.

“Everything okay?” 

She was a deer in the headlights, her expression caught and stunned. He furrowed his brows and slowly walked into the room. 

“What did you find?” 

She unsheathed the letter and handed it to him. “It was under the linens.” 

Alec drew his glasses up the bridge of his nose, his eyes darting swiftly as he read the note, periodically looking up at Ellie’s response. “He never expressed any of this to you?” 

Ellie shook her head. “He was hesitant about having more children, but that was it.” 

“You’re certain he didn’t touch the boys?” 

Ellie’s face contorted as she fought back tears. “Tom said he didn’t. I don’t know about Fred.” 

“I don’t think he was being honest in this letter.” Alec said, shaking the letter about. “He was covering.” He was pacing about the room, his mind humming with ideas. “I think we should take this into CID. Try to reopen the case.”

“No,” Ellie interjected firmly, her eyes flashing momentarily. “No.”

Alec stopped midstride, turning his head toward her. 

“He’s out of our lives. If anything happened to the boys, we’ll deal with that. I want to move on.” 

Alec moved toward her. “The only way to move on is to make sure he’s behind bars.”

“No. I want to move on without him. Fred doesn’t remember him. Tom is struggling on his own. We don’t need to face another trial.” Alec reached out to stroke her arm, but she halted his actions. “I didn’t realize how much he affected me.” 

Alec reached out again, but Ellie once more stopped him. He knew that their relationship had been turbulent at times, often dictated by the overwhelming memories flooding Ellie’s brain. But, despite it all, Ellie was also strong and would weather this particular tempest. 

“What can I do?” He asked. 

She closed his hands around the letter. “Keep him away from me. I don’t know what that looks like. Maybe we go to therapy together or you pursue the restraining order, but just don’t make me go through a trial again.” 

She hesitated momentarily before clutching her arms about his neck, cleaving him to her. He drew her close to him, running his hands soothingly up and down her back, assuring her that he would protect her. 

In time, she would tell Alec. She would tell him everything. 

&

That Christmas, their tree was ornamented with bright colorful lights and tinsel that covered nearly every part of the tree. Alec complained that it looked tacky, but Ellie smirked and said that this year, their first proper Christmas together as a family, they ought to go all out. Ostentatious worked. 

Daisy’s train arrived late due to the weather. It was blustery outside, the snow forming currents and drifts alongside the road. 

“I hope you haven’t gone all out,” Daisy said as Alec started up the car, heading toward Ellie’s house. 

“You mean Ellie’s gone all out. She’s excited to have you.” 

Out of the corner of his eye, Alec noticed a soft smile spread across Daisy’s face. His daughter had spent little time with Ellie, but he had reassured Ellie that Daisy would love her. That didn’t mean that Miller, as he still couldn’t help calling her from time to time, wouldn’t spread herself thin to make Daisy feel at home in this unfamiliar home. 

Under the wafts of snow, Daisy noticed lights twinkling that ascended to the roof. She pointed this out to her dad, who verified that he had a hand in the decorations. Before she knocked, or even ascended the stairs, Ellie opened the door and drew Daisy into a hug. 

“It’s so lovely to see you again!” 

Their few exchanges had revolved a burgeoning relationship tiptoeing around another case and another job. This time, Daisy had her dad to herself and could finally meet the person who might become a pivotal part of her own life.

Inside the house, a joyous scene greeted Daisy. Fred was licking frosting from his fingers while Tom, dressed in a sweater and slacks, greeted Daisy and asked if he could get her anything to eat or drink. Ellie’s father, David, was near sleep in a chair nearby, his hand carefully cradling a glass of whiskey. Lucy was in the kitchen or rather she was drinking in the kitchen while Beth was in the kitchen doing actual cooking and work. Meanwhile, Ollie was snapping photos of food in the kitchen for his Twitter account, Beth attempting to run him out unless he helped.

“Hey Daiz,” Chloe said, Lizzie on her hip.

“Hi,” Daisy said, suddenly overwhelmed and shocked by the revelry greeting her. 

“We’re a bit of a madhouse,” Ellie said. “Why don’t you, Chloe, and Tom watch Lizzie and Fred upstairs. Fred! Get that canister out of your mouth.” Ellie wrangled Fred in attempt to remove a canister of frosting that he was rapidly divesting the sickly sweet stuff from. 

Once everyone was in their specific place, harnessing their specified role, Alec wrapped his arm about Ellie’s waist. 

“Happy Christmas, Miller,” he whispered to her. 

“Happy Christmas, Hardy,” she echoed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final installment is about Joe returning to Ellie and Alec's, as well as Beth's lives. 
> 
> As a warning, it is very dark and deals overtly with a pedophile.


End file.
